In the offline world it is common for business to offer promotions in order to increase market share or to, ultimately, increase sales. Many promotions are costly for the promoter, and are essentially limited to subsidies to confirmed customers (e.g., in return for a purchase, a discount can be provided). Conventional promotions typically use nothing more than the underlying product and a discount to leverage the promotion.
Many promotions have adopted the notion of “rewards” points that can be collected and subsequently redeemed for other goods or services. However, such promotions, due to the miniscule value of the rewards points in relation to what must be purchased in order to redeem the points for something of value, generally are not effective in soliciting new customers, but rather, are mostly employed by existing prolific customers who save the points, but would probably have purchased the underlying product in any event.
Other conventional promotions have adopted the notion of game pieces, which can be collected and traded to (arguably) increase the chances of winning a prize. However, to win a jackpot, all but one or a small number of the total game pieces necessary to win are common, whereas the remaining one or few game pieces are rare. Thus, the promotion is effectively reduced to a sweepstakes since the acquisition of the rare game piece (which would not be traded by a rational collector) is effectively the equivalent to winning.